The real strike zone

A good article about the misleading strike zone box that pops up on MLB broadcasts these days. I hadn’t noticed it, but now that it’s been mentioned…

So what could be causing this? If you look in my graphs above, you’ll see that I draw in the strike zone just before 1 foot from the middle of the plate (10 inches). That’s because while the plate is 8.5 inches wide, you have to add the width of the ball as well (about 1.5 inches) because if any part of it crosses the plate, it’s a strike. The only thing that I can think of that could have shaved a consistent 3 inches off the width of the plate is that whoever has set this up has gotten this the wrong way around and has subtracted 1.5 inches from the edge of the plate to find the strike zone instead, which would lead to about a 3 inch mistake.

This is not just confined to Sportsnet- the same thing was happening during the playoffs and every game on ESPN I’ve seen this year. I’m pretty shocked really that the announcers haven’t complained about it being useless or the umpires haven’t criticized it for being outright slander. I’m pretty sure Questec is still floating around in some parks so MLB knows that the umpires aren’t as bad as they’re being presented so why it continues to let the fans think they are is beyond me.

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